A pair of philosophers have developed a new research tool that uses AI to provide comprehensive and reliable philosophical literature reviews, and they’d like you to give it a try. Just last week I checked out a new AI tool discussed in Nature that is supposed to be able to “synthesize scientific literature”. As good as it may be at that (I’m not in a position to judge), I can tell you that it didn’t seem to have access to much philosophy, and so was not of any use for philosophical inquiries. And general LLMs like ChatGPT may pull from random or odd or even imaginary sources, making them difficult to trust. Still, for some, the idea of an AI philosophy research assistant has significant appeal, and now, thanks to Johannes Himmelreich (Syracuse) and Marco Meyer (Hamburg), you can see for yourself what one could do and what you think about it. They call their tool PhilLit, and in the following guest post, they explain why they made it, what it does, and how you can try it. Can AI Write a Useful Philosophical Literature Review? by Johannes Himmelreich and Marco Meyer A year ago, the best AI model could complete tasks that take a human expert 56 minutes. Today, this same metric, the task-completion time horizon, is around 6.5 hours.[1] These numbers were derived from tasks used in software development. How much better did AI get in the past 12 months at tasks that we use in philosophy? Unfortunately, nobody knows. As philosophers, we might want to know whether and how AI can be used for philosophy. Of course, asking “how AI can be used for philosophy” in the abstract is about as fruitful as asking “how the internet can be used for philosophy”—it depends on the philosophical task and the corner of the internet where you look for help. Recently, this blog hosted a guide on whether AI can help develop research ideas through conversations. Conversations are a general-purpose tool for cognitive work. But research also involves certain more specific tasks. AI can help with at least one specific task that we as researchers undertake regularly: orienting ourselves in unfamiliar literature. But asking ChatGPT to do so won’t do. Even the research agents.. The post Can AI Write a Useful Philosophical Literature Review? (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has signed onto to a letter by PEN America to the Texas A&M University System Regents “to request that they rescind two policies, passed in fall 2025, that have resulted in the censorship of academic courses across the institution, and the announced closure of the University’s Women’s & Gender Studies Program.” The policies (discussed here, here, and here) are “an unacceptable incursion on the principles of academic freedom that form the well-established bedrock of American universities,” according to the February 10th letter. The APA is one 36 organizations to sign onto the PEN letter. Here’s the text of the letter: Dear Texas A&M University System Regents, We, the undersigned organizations, are writing in defense of academic freedom to request that you rescind the recent changes to Policies 08.01 and 12.01 that have resulted in censorship of course content at Texas A&M, including the cancellation of certain classes and the announced closure of the University’s Women’s & Gender Studies Program. As stewards of the Texas A&M University System, the Regents have the obligation to uphold academic freedom and encourage, rather than stifle, open inquiry in and out of the classroom. The revisions made in November and December 2025 to Policy 08.01, Civil Rights Protections and Compliance, prohibit academic courses from “advocating race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.” The campus president may review and exempt “specific non-core curriculum or graduate courses in some disciplines” but only “in limited circumstances upon demonstration of a necessary educational purpose.” Revised Policy 12.01, Academic Freedom, Responsibility and Tenure, prohibits faculty from teaching “material that is inconsistent with the approved syllabus for the course,” with no allowance for flexibility. These policies limit students’ access to course content related to race, gender, and sexual orientation, and constrain professors’ ability to teach effectively by prohibiting instruction responsive to class discussions or current events. National organizations—including PEN America, the AAUP, and FIRE—joined the Texas AAUP-AFT, the Texas AFT, and local stakeholders in raising concerns about the chilling effect of these policies. Unfortunately, a wave of content restrictions and mandated syllabus revisions has since swept across the Texas A&M System. Courses have been cancelled, including a graduate course on Ethics in Public Policy that was cancelled after the start.. The post APA Joins Other Organizations in Calling for Texas A&M to Rescind Censorship Policies first appeared on Daily Nous.

What’s the latest data about philosophy graduate programs? In the following guest post, Carolyn Dicey Jennings, professor of philosophy at UC Merced and co-director of Academic Philosophy Data and Analysis (APDA), shares results from the latest APDA survey, completed at the end of 2025. It includes information about job placement, program ratings, department climate, and more. (A version of this post also appeared at the APDA Blog.) Placement, Program Ratings, Student Comments, and Keywords: an APDA Update Permanent academic placement for philosophy PhDs looks steady, while program and climate ratings are up. by Carolyn Dicey Jennings Our last data update was in 2024, covering 2013–2023 graduates and select results from the 2023 survey. This data update includes 2014–2024 graduates and select results from the 2025 survey, which was completed December 31st. More information on the survey, both methodology and results, will be released over the next few months. This post mainly provides information about the data gathering process, placement findings, and comparisons with the last data update. In sum: permanent academic placement looks steady, while program and climate ratings are up. Changes to specific programs’ placement rates and program/climate ratings are discussed below. The first thing to note is the range of included programs. We aim to include all primarily English-language philosophy PhD programs in the world that have available graduation and/or employment data. This year we were able to cover 149 programs, provided in a table below (along with the date that we completed our data checks and a link to the publicly available APDA data). Five of these are new: McMaster University, Universite de Montreal, University of Auckland, University of Bristol, University of Hong Kong, and Uppsala University. There are 65 other programs that we contact but are not yet able to cover due to data availability, which are listed below*. Data checks were a team effort, and we benefitted from the assistance of three undergraduate research assistants: Rocco Perez, Danna Valenzuela, and Devyn Williams. Notes on how we collect the information is available here and on the about page. The 2024 data update was made available through a Looker dashboard hosted on our website that draws from a Google Sheet. Those who would like to compare the current Looker dashboard with past data can use the.. The post Placement, Program Ratings, Student Comments, and Keywords: an APDA Update (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.

If you appreciate Rawls, you should read this brief essay by Joseph Heath. If you don’t appreciate Rawls, you should read this brief essay by Joseph Heath. If you’re in the first group, you’ll enjoy how Heath captures Rawls’s importance. If you’re in the second group, reading Heath’s essay may help you become a member of the first group. One thing Heath does is draw attention to Rawls’s innovative reconceptualization of the social contract approach as something oriented not just towards the legitimation of state authority, but to the creation of the basic structure of society, including its major economic institutions. If this does not strike you as interesting, let alone innovative, it’s only because, as Heath puts it, “the intellectual dominance of Rawls has been so complete, for so long, that we have all become desperately bored of talking about him.” Heath’s remarks on Rawls’s second book are worth quoting at length: A Theory of Justice attracted a great deal of attention, and a great deal of criticism, when it was published in 1971. At the time, Rawls was still treating questions of political philosophy (such as “what is justice?”) the same way that Plato did—as a set of intellectual puzzles that needed to be solved (such that, once we figure out what justice is, we can proceed to build a society that will embody the ideal). The problem that he immediately encountered was also as old as Plato. Having put forward his most clever argument in support of his favored conception of justice, he found that most people still disagreed, and insisted on defending their own quite different views. This led to the second big move in Rawls’ work, which took the form of a curve ball that he threw everyone in his second book, Political Liberalism. Most philosophers, when they encounter objections to their arguments, double down on the original method, trying to come up with better arguments, with the hope that this will silence the critics and end all disagreement. Rawls, however, took a different tack. If one were to imagine his response to critics stated conversationally, it would go something like this: “I have given you my preferred conception of justice. You have given me yours... The post A Brief Appreciation of Rawls first appeared on Daily Nous.

New links… “The current state of education positively requires external pressure on the universities, demonstrating to them a model of inquiry that they have themselves patently failed to uphold” — Justin Smith-Ruiu introduces The Hinternet Foundation and its programs “How we interact with AI systems will shape what they become” — a profile of Amanda Askell, the philosopher teaching Anthropic’s Claude AI to be moral “Noam and I have felt a profound weight regarding the unresolved questions surrounding our past interactions with Epstein. We do not wish to leave this chapter shrouded in ambiguity” — a message from Valéria Chomsky The podcast of the Center for Philosophy of Science at Pittsburgh is back with its second season — the first episode features Edouard Machery in conversation with David Wallace about philosophy of physics Who has published at least once in each of philosophy’s “top 5” generalist journals? — a list of authors, their articles, and their departments, courtesy of Nick Laskowski “The question [is] whether liberalism can support an ample humanism… whether it can be beautiful and sweet and sustaining… [L]iberals ignore these aesthetic matters at their own peril” — Becca Rothfeld on the aesthetics of politics “Today’s AI systems make the dialectical practice cherished by philosophers readily available” — reflections on Plato, AI, and the value of writing from Elay Shech Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.Previous edition. The post Mini-Heap first appeared on Daily Nous.

In 2024, Philosophia: A Global Journal of Philosophy introduced an “Outstanding Referee Award“, joining a small number of journals that single out particular referees for special acknowledgement of their services. The award is intended to “recognize those referees who stand out from among the many scholars who lend their time and expertise to comment on manuscripts submitted for consideration with Philosophia“, said the journal’s editor-in-chief, Mitchell Green (University of Connecticut). This year’s winner is Elizabeth Schechter (University of Maryland). Professor Green writes: Dr. Schechter’s report on the manuscript they agreed to review was exemplary for its insight, charity, and actionable suggestions for improvement offered the author. As such, their contribution was a paradigm of the kind of input from external reviewers that makes high-quality, double-blind refereed journal publication possible. The prize includes free online access to the entire contents of Philosophia for a year, a cash prize of $500, and the appearance of the winner’s name on the journal’s homepage. (Note: this post originally misstated the prize amount; the error has now been corrected.) The post Philosophia’s Outstanding Referee Award first appeared on Daily Nous.

At the end of this post is a poll about how much reading you assign. Please take part in it if you teach philosophy courses. Thanks. “Stop Meeting Students Where They Are” is the title of a recent piece at The Atlantic by Walt Hunter, professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. In it, he shares what are now familiar observations about the state of college student literacy (see this post, for example), lamenting that students don’t read. He was worried. Nonetheless, he assigned lots of readings, and whole books. The result? “I regretted ever doubting my students. I am now convinced that I was wrong to listen to the ostensible wisdom of the day.” He says: Two things became clear in the early weeks of class. First, the students were reading. They were reading everything, or most of it. I know this because I had them identify obscure passages, without notes, devices, or books at hand. Second, they were experiencing life in a way that was not easy outside the class and its assignments. They were expected—required—to give huge chunks of time to an activity, reading, that was not monetizing their attention in real time. They had, in effect, taken back their lives, for an hour or two each day. It turned out that American literature, which so often flirts with utopian fantasies of regaining control—hello, Walden!—could do precisely that… The iterative process of confusion, endurance, and incremental understanding is what literature professors teach when they assign whole books. This march toward understanding doesn’t have a great name other than reading. We need to help students grow into the difficulty of reading. The best way to do that is not to “meet them where they are,” a bromide that has become doctrine for higher education. We have to do as Whitman says instead: Stop somewhere ahead and wait for them to catch up. The article is inspiring but also a bit frustrating, as it’s unclear why Hunter’s approach worked. He shares only a few details about what he did to increase the odds of success, such as replacing take-home essays with in-class writing. It is unclear how many students he had in his class. He doesn’t acknowledge that Case Western is a prestigious.. The post How Much Reading Do You Assign? first appeared on Daily Nous.

Laurence Thomas, professor emeritus of philosophy at Syracuse University, died this past December. The following obituary is by David Benatar (University of Cape Town). Laurence Mordekhai Thomas (1949-2025) Laurence Thomas, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University, died on 27 December 2025. He was 76. His life focused on his work: he was a passionate, productive philosophical writer, and a popular professor. He was also a man of contrasts. He was effervescent and enthusiastic. However, he was also a man of great interiority, and very private. This challenges the obituarist who wishes both to convey a sense of the person and to respect his privacy. Laurence was born on 1 August 1949 and grew up, an only-child, in Baltimore, Maryland. Both his parents died by his mid-teens. Thereafter, he was reared by an aunt—an “ole fashioned Jamaican woman” who, he said, “never allowed me to wallow in the valley of despair”, and to whom he later dedicated his first book, Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character (Temple, 1989). He received his BA in Philosophy from the University of Maryland in 1971. At the University of Pittsburgh, he received an MA in 1973 and a PhD in 1976. His doctoral supervisor was Kurt Baier, for whose 1987 festschrift in Synthese, Laurence was later the guest editor. Before joining Syracuse in 1989, he held positions at Notre Dame (1977-1978), the University of Maryland (1978-1980), the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1980-1986), and Oberlin (1986-1989). In 1978-1979, he was Andrew Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard. While his primary Syracuse appointment was in Philosophy, he was also affiliated with the Political Science Department and the Judaic Studies program. Professor Thomas’ specialization was in moral, political, and social philosophy, with a strong thread of moral psychology. The hallmarks of his writing were exquisite sensitivity to human psychology and behaviour, thoroughgoing decency, and accessibility. His second book, Vessels of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust (Temple, 1993), is a prime example. It is a nuanced examination of the similarities and differences between the subtitular atrocities. Eschewing invidious judgements about which was worse, he probed the nature of these respective evils. He did much of his writing in Paris, to which he would regularly decamp... The post Laurence Thomas (1949-2025) first appeared on Daily Nous.

This is the weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources, new reviews of philosophy books, new podcast episodes, recently published open access philosophy books, and more. (If we missed anything, please let us know.) SEP New: ∅ Revised: Teleological Notions in Biology by Colin Allen and Jacob Neal. Francisco Suárez by Christopher Shields and Daniel Schwartz. Suicide by Michael Cholbi and Brent Kious. The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy by Bongrae Seok. Denis Diderot by Charles T. Wolfe and J.B. Shank. Attention by Christopher Mole. IEP ∅ 1000-Word Philosophy ∅ BJPS Short Reads ∅ Recently Published Open Access Philosophy Books Risk, Death, and Well-Being: The Ethical Foundations of Fatality Risk Regulation by Matthew D. Adler (Oxford University Press). Philosophy Podcasts – Recent Episodes (via Jason Chen) Book Reviews The Freedom of Words: Abstractness and the Power of Language by Anna Borghi is reviewed by Guy Dove at Philosophical Psychology. The Concept of Democracy: An Essay on Conceptual Amelioration and Abandonment by Herman Cappelen is reviewed by Jason Brennan at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The Brain Abstracted by Mazviita Chirimuuta is reviewed by Adina Roskies at Philosophical Psychology. Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious by Antonio Damasio is reviewed by Da Dong et al. at Philosophical Psychology. Subjective Experience: Its Fate in Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Mind, edited by Morris N. Eagle, is reviewed by Hidayat et al. at Philosophical Psychology. Mary Shepherd’s An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect by Don Garrett (ed.) is reviewed by Samuel C. Rickless at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The Mirror and the Mind: A History of Self-Recognition in the Human Sciences by Katja Guenther is reviewed by Da Dong et al. at Philosophical Psychology. From a Marxist-Feminist Point of View: Essays on Freedom, Rationality, and Human Nature by Nancy Holmstrom is reviewed by Sonia Maria Pavel at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The Four Realms of Existence: A New Theory of Being Human by Joseph E. LeDoux is reviewed by S.A. Burns Brown at Philosophical Psychology. The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game by Thi Nguyen is reviewed by N.J. Enfield at The Times Literary Supplement. Mental Imagery: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience by Bence Nanay is reviewed.. The post Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update first appeared on Daily Nous.

<p>Megan Hyska, currently assistant professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, will be moving to University of Leeds, where she will be associate professor of philosophy. Dr Hyska&#8216;s research is in social philosophy of language, social metaphysics, and social epistemology, focusing especially on questions about political communication. She has written on topics such as social organizing, social movements, propaganda, AI-generated media, the act of address, and the value of communication itself. You can learn more about her work here and here. She takes up her new position at Leeds in August, 2026. (via Pekka Väyrynen)</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/06/hyska-from-northwestern-to-leeds/">Hyska from Northwestern to Leeds</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>It appears that no new tenure-track hires will be made at public regional universities and community colleges in Oklahoma. J. Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, has issued an executive order recommending  as much to the state&#8217;s Regents for Higher Education, who, it&#8217;s predicted, will comply with the recommendation. &#8220;Existing tenure agreements&#8221; made prior to the executive order will remain in effect. Whether that refers only to agreements that have granted tenure, or also to agreements with existing tenure-track faculty about being eligible to be considered for tenure is unclear, though language in the order suggests it is the former. Tenured and tenure-track hiring at the state&#8217;s two research universities&#8212;the University of Oklahoma at Norman and Oklahoma State University’s main campus in Stillwater&#8212;will continue, with tenured employees subject to post-tenure review at least once every five years. Below are two pages of the executive order: According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, more than 900 faculty members at regional and community colleges in Oklahoma currently have tenure.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/06/tenure-to-be-eliminated-at-many-public-colleges-in-oklahoma/">Tenure to Be Eliminated at Many Public Colleges in Oklahoma</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>Links to stuff elsewhere you might find worth checking out&#8230; “A wave of censorship and self-censorship that… is curbing academic freedom and learning” &#8212; the NYT on how &#8220;we’ve never seen this much surveillance&#8221; of university faculty “There are two conversational dogmas” &#8212; are you a member of the &#8220;Church of Interruption&#8221; or the &#8220;Church of Strong Civility&#8221;, and why does it matter? (via the Browser) Do AI language models and AI vision models converge in their representation of the world? &#8212; Plato&#8217;s cave is serving as an metaphor for scientists working on this problem “We are most human when we are thinking together, and only by doing this and habituating ourselves toward doing it can we change the circumstances that deprive us of this shared humanity” &#8212; Daniel Walden on why the left should support &#8220;great books&#8221; programs “Instead of prescriptive principles, we should instead think of a liberal egalitarian theory’s most important product to be ‘evaluative discernment&#8217;” &#8212; Gina Schouten talks with Blain Neufeld about &#8220;The Anatomy of Justice&#8221; What should you do if you get pepper-sprayed? Don’t: rub your eyes. Do: clean your eyes with a mix of water and baby shampoo &#8212; philosophers are people, too. See also: &#8220;Being a Good Philosopher-Activist&#8220; How to be a presentist &#8212; Mark Balaguer talks about time with Troy Jollimore &#38; Robert Jones Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.Previous edition.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/05/mini-heap-700/">Mini-Heap</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>David T. Wasserman, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health, died this past December. The following memorial notice is by Sean Aas (Georgetown University). David T. Wasserman, bioethicist and philosopher of disability, health, genetics, and law, passed away peacefully on December 28, 2025, at the age of 72 in University Park, Maryland. David pursued a career applying questions of ethics and philosophy to issues ranging from genetic testing to disability rights to criminal appeals. He worked over two decades at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park (the Institute is now based at George Mason University). In 2007, he co-founded the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University, led by his longtime collaborator, Adrienne Asch, before serving on the faculty of the National Institutes of Health Center for Bioethics, where he pursued bioethics research, organized academic events, and mentored numerous post-baccalaureate and post-doctoral fellows. David was the author of more than one hundred published articles, chapters, and reviews across philosophy, law, and bioethics. He was a founding figure in the philosophy of disability and contributed extensively to debates on the ethics of reproduction. In 2015, he defended the ethical propriety of reproduction itself against David Benatar’s ‘anti-natalism’ in their book, Debating Procreation. David co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability and has served on the editorial boards of journals such as Ethics and the Journal of Applied Philosophy. David was named a Fellow of the Hastings Center, a major honor in the field. David graduated Yale University with a bachelor of arts in philosophy in 1975, the University of Michigan Law School in 1978, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a master of arts in social psychology in 1984. A devoted father and husband, David married Susan Ginsberg in 1992 and had two sons, Jacob and Adam Wasserman. He shared his love of hiking, history, and humor with his many friends and family.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/05/david-t-wasserman-1953-2025/">David T. Wasserman (1953-2025)</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>For some reason, Renu Khator, the longtime president of the University of Houston and chancellor of the University of Houston System, has felt the need to remind her faculty that &#8220;our responsibility is to give [students] the ability to form their own opinions, not force a particular one on them. Our guiding principle is to teach them, not indoctrinate them.&#8221; In the wake of this reminder, Houston&#8217;s Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Daniel P. O&#8217;Connor, has asked all faculty in the college to complete a form declaring that they&#8217;re not indoctrinating their students. The reminder and the requirement to complete such a form seem to endorse the idea that universities are overrun with professors who are busy &#8220;indoctrinating&#8221; students and using their classrooms for &#8220;advocacy&#8221; rather than teaching. They&#8217;re not. Rather, this complaint, though disguised as a concern for good pedagogy, is just one form of political and cultural attack by rightwing politicians on the institutional autonomy of universities and the academic freedom of professors. Here&#8217;s the form faculty are required to complete:  &#160; Why is the dean doing this? Why is the university president endorsing the indoctrination narrative? Is it political pressure? Others have not succumbed so easily. For example, &#8220;when trustees demanded that President Patricia Okker of the New College of Florida declare that her faculty were indoctrinating students, she put her job on the line instead.&#8221; In a message to the faculty, Khator talks about &#8220;the process we are embarking on as we comply with the requirements of SB37 as they pertain to the core curriculum.&#8221; But the form is not required by Bill 37, which says nothing about indoctrination. Rather, it is about requiring a periodic review of the general education curricula and certain programs at institutions of higher education in Texas. It also lays out the responsibilities of institutions of higher education in the state: (1)  transmit culture through general education; (2)  extend knowledge; (3)  teach and train students for professions; (4)  provide for scientific, engineering, medical, and other academic research; (5)  protect intellectual exploration and academic freedom; (6)  strive for intellectual excellence; (7)  provide educational opportunity for all who can benefit from postsecondary education and training; and (8)  provide..</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/04/when-the-university-president-endorses-the-indoctrination-narrative/">When the University President Endorses the “Indoctrination” Narrative (updated)</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>The faculty of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program at the University at Buffalo were awarded a $4 million grant from the US Department of Education for an initiative on &#8220;civil discourse&#8221;. The grant&#8217;s principle investigator is Justin Bruner, and the other investigators include fellow philosophers James Beebe, David Gray, Ryan Muldoon, Alex Oprea, Alex Schaefer, and Daniel Stephens, and political scientist Jake Neiheisel. Their project is called &#8220;From Campus to Community: Civil Discourse as a Catalyst for Local Civic Renewal&#8221;. Professor Bruner writes that &#8220;the SUNY [State University of New York] system has adopted a civil discourse curricular requirement, so this grant is an opportunity to get students into contact with issues in social epistemology, political epistemology, and of course social and political philosophy.&#8221; Part of the grant goes towards curricular development, which will include, according to a press release about the grant, &#8220;three new undergraduate courses on free expression and civil discourse; a new certificate program in civil discourse and civic leadership; as well as an executive education program for civic leaders.&#8221; The project will also include &#8220;a longitudinal study on the social norms of civil discourse to be conducted during the grant period.&#8221; Related: &#8220;$2.5 Million Grant for Philosopher-Led Project on Diversity &#38; Disagreement&#8220;, &#8220;Philosopher Wins $3.8m Grant for Work on Aging &#38; Loneliness&#8220;, &#8220;Buffalo PPE Nets Big Grant for Local, Empirical, Philosophical Project on Immigration&#8220;</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/03/buffalo-philosophers-receive-4-million-grant-for-civil-discourse-initiative/">Buffalo Philosophers Receive $4 Million Grant for Civil Discourse Initiative</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>Some university administrations are (as we have seen) trying to prevent professors from teaching about topics related to gender, sexuality, and race. Some may be doing this of their own accord. Others may be begrudgingly succumbing to pressure from legislators or trustees. Still others may be preparing to manage or even resist that pressure. The result is that some administrations are cancelling certain courses and many others are gathering information about courses. Last night, an anonymous contributor to the Teaching Philosophy Facebook Group shared what&#8217;s happening at their university: I&#8217;m teaching at one of the universities that is requiring professors to provide justification for inclusion of topics related to race, gender, sex, and sexuality in all of our courses. And they&#8217;re looking for help finding official or institutional or otherwise authoritative-sounding resources to help with that justification process: I&#8217;m compiling resources that support the inclusion of these topics in philosophy courses. In particular, I&#8217;m looking for resources that have institutional backing (such as the APA or other professional orgs) that situate these topics within our discipline and/or convey clearly to non-philosophers that these are legitimate or essential topics of study within philosophy. By way of example, they shared that: some colleagues in Sociology are referring to the ASA Code of Ethics to support their choices (whether or not that will be successful remains to be seen). We don’t exactly have a corollary in philosophy as far as I know. But does anyone know of any resources&#8230; along those lines? Your suggestions would, I&#8217;m sure, be greatly appreciated. Please be specific, and if possible, provide links to the relevant sites or documents.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/03/justifying-the-inclusion-of-race-gender-sexuality-etc-in-philosophy-courses/">Justifying the Inclusion of Race, Gender, Sexuality (etc.) in Philosophy Courses</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>&#8220;For the first time in human history, we are no longer alone in the space of general intelligence.&#8221; In a commentary published today at Nature, a group of researchers, including two philosophers, argue that &#8220;once you clear away certain confusions, and strive to make fair comparisons and avoid anthropocentric biases, the conclusion is straightforward: by reasonable standards&#8230; we have artificial systems that are generally intelligent.&#8221; In the piece, Eddy Keming Chen (Philosophy, UCSD), Mikhail Belkin (Computer Science, UCSD), Leon Bergen (Linguistics, UCSD), and David Danks (Philosophy, UVA) offer what they think is a reasonable clarification of the idea of general intelligence (AGI), evidence that today&#8217;s AI fits with this clarified definition, address an array of objections, and discuss why this is important. You can read the article here. They acknowledge that when it comes to general intelligence, &#8220;there is no ‘bright line’ test for its presence&#8212;any exact threshold is inevitably arbitrary&#8221;. Still, progress in figuring out what has general intelligence is possible, since, &#8220;we recognize paradigm cases without needing exact boundaries.&#8221; For example, &#8220;humans are paradigm examples of general intelligence; a pocket calculator lacks it, despite superhuman ability at calculations.&#8221; In assessing what has general intelligence, we need to make sure we&#8217;re not demanding more for non-humans than for humans, they think. So when it comes to methodology, they say: &#8220;When we assess general intelligence or ability in other humans, we do not attempt to peer inside their heads to verify understanding&#8212;we infer it from behaviour, conversation and problem-solving. No single test is definitive, but evidence accumulates. The same applies to artificial systems.&#8221; They then survey some of that evidence, observing that some current AI&#8217;s perform not just at &#8220;Turing-test level&#8221; proficiency but in ways comparable to expert humans. They note that &#8220;current LLMs even exceed what we demand of humans: we credit individual people with general intelligence on the basis of much weaker evidence.&#8221; They also respond to various objections, such as: LLMs are just stochastic parrots, LLMs lack world models, LLMs only understand words, LLMs lack agency, LLMs lack a sense of self, LLMs &#8220;hallucinate&#8221;, and others. As for the significance of AGI, the authors write: Nicolaus Copernicus displaced humans from the centre of the cosmos. Darwin displaced humans..</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/02/is-artificial-general-intelligence-here/">Is Artificial General Intelligence Here?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>A new website serves as a centralized source of information for &#8220;Bioethics Bowl,&#8221; a learning competition modeled after the popular Ethics Bowl events, but with a focus on issues in clinical, biomedical research, and healthcare ethics. The site was created by Mark Wells (Northeastern University). He writes, &#8220;While Bioethics Bowls competitions have been running for years now, this is the first website to gather information about those competitions into one place.&#8221; The site contains information about upcoming competitions, resources for running the competitions, and other information. You can check it out here.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/02/a-new-hub-for-bioethics-bowl-information/">A New Hub for Bioethics Bowl Information</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>This is the weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources, new reviews of philosophy books, new podcast episodes, recently published open access philosophy books, and more. Online Resources Update [Last Week of January, 2026] SEP New: Marsilius of Padua by Alessandro Mulieri. Revised: John Philoponus by Christian Wildberg and Tommaso De Robertis. Mally’s Deontic Logic by Gert-Jan Lokhorst, Stefania Centrone, and Pierluigi Minari. Informal Logic by Leo Groarke. Dreams and Dreaming by Jennifer M. Windt. Medieval Theories of the Syllogism by Henrik Lagerlund. IEP ∅ 1000-Word Philosophy Plato’s Symposium: Philosophizing About Love by Matthew Sanderson. BJPS Short Reads ∅ Recently Published Open Access Philosophy Books ∅ Book Reviews* The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is reviewed by Jennifer Szalai at The New York Times. Alexandre Kojève: An Intellectual Biography by Boris Groys and The Life and Thought of Alexandre Kojève by Marco Filoni, translated by David Broder, are reviewed by Jonathan Rée at London Review of Books. Reasons for Logic, Logic for Reasons: Pragmatics, Semantics, and Conceptual Roles by Ulf Hlobil and Robert Brandom is reviewed by John Horty at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy by Harvey Mansfield is reviewed by Samuel Goldman at The Wall Street Journal. One Life to Lead: The Mysteries of Time and the Goods of Attachment by Samuel Scheffler is reviewed by Thomas Nagel at London Review of Books.  Philosophy Podcasts – Recent Episodes (via Jason Chen) Compiled by Michael Glawson BONUS: Proof without context. (See also.)</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/02/02/online-philosophy-resources-weekly-update-421/">Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>David Hume&#8217;s tomb was one of a few sites at a cemetery in Edinburgh that have been vandalized with “disturbing occult-style paraphernalia,” according to The Guardian. The Guardian reports: A tour guide made the discovery at the Old Calton burial ground. It included a drawing of a naked woman pointing a bloodied knife at a baby with a noose around its neck, and coded writing on red electrical tape attached to the David Hume mausoleum and two nearby memorial stones. The guide emailed photographs of the vandalism to Edinburgh council and described the symbols as “satanic”. A group on Telegram purporting to be responsible for the vandalism of graves at unnamed cemeteries posted photographs of the same damage in a now-deleted channel.  More details here. Readers may recall this earlier bit of Kant-related vandalism.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/01/30/humes-tomb-vandalized-with-satanic-symbols/">Hume’s Tomb Vandalized with “Satanic” Symbols</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>New links&#8230; Why does philosophy have a history? &#8212; a lecture by Michael Rosen at the Royal Institute of Philosophy The inaugural addresses delivered by the first ten women Presidents of the Aristotelian Society &#8212; now available in a free virtual issue How philosophy of science can “promote dialogue and mutual understanding” in a polarized, conflict-ridden, and distrustful society? &#8212; Kevin Elliott surveys the ways “The most profound worldview shattering insights in modern human history haven’t come from philosophy… They’ve come from science” &#8212; Rachel Powell talks with Sean Carroll about evolution, contingency, morality, extraterrestrials, and more “People rarely change important beliefs in a single conversation,” so what can we do that “increases the parties’ willingness to speak to each other again”? &#8212; Julia Minson provides advice for &#8220;constructive disagreement&#8221; “When we look at the essential problems with plagiarism that make it impermissible in an educational context, we find that AI appropriation has exactly the same problems” &#8212; Mark Robert Taylor on professors&#8217; obligation to restrict AI in student writing Philosophy Talk, the long-running philosophy show, has made its past episodes free for anyone to access &#8212; there are over 600 of them Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.Previous edition.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/01/29/mini-heap-699/">Mini-Heap</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>&#8220;Value capture is&#8230; where your values are rich and subtle or in the process of developing that way. And you get put in a setting or near a technology or an institution that presents you with a simplified, typically quantified version, and the simplified version takes over.&#8221; That&#8217;s C. Thi Nguyen, professor of philosophy at the University of Utah and author of the newly released The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else&#8217;s Game, in an interview on the podcast of journalist and commentator Chris Hayes. Value capture happens in various contexts, for example, joining a social media platform &#8220;to connect to people, and then becoming obsessed with likes or follows&#8230; or going to school out of a love of education, and getting becoming obsessed with GPA.&#8221; He continues: &#8220;You might&#8217;ve thought that if anybody is not vulnerable to this, it would be [philosophers].&#8221; But as it turns out, &#8220;we are vulnerable as hell.&#8221; He then shares part of his story: So I went into philosophy because I loved weird, interesting questions about like the meaning of life and why any of this is here and why are things beautiful. And then I went into philosophy grad school and I got enculturated. And in philosophy, there is a status ranking collated by survey of what the status is of the journals you publish in and the departments you can be at. And you don&#8217;t know any of this when you go to grad school. You&#8217;re like, philosophy is cool. I want to think about the meaning of life. And then almost everyone comes out being like, what is my highest rank publication? What is the ranking of my job? And there&#8217;s a shift.   And this is the shift that I started thinking about because when that happened, what my sense of what I was trying to do changed because as it turns out for various complex institutional reasons, a lot of the stuff that gets you published in high status journals is not big meaningful questions. It&#8217;s fairly technical work on fairly arcane issues and it&#8217;s kind of micro moves. I mean, I would say some of these micro moves are very valuable, but it&#8217;s like tiny technical logic pushing&#8230; And I..</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/01/28/value-capture-in-philosophy/">Value Capture in Philosophy</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>Bernhard Waldenfels, professor emeritus of Philosophy at the Ruhr University in Bochum and an influential figure in contemporary phenomenology, has died. Professor Waldenfels was known for his phenomenological approaches to a variety of topics, including attention, the foreign, embodiment, nature, migration, the unconscious, and more. He wrote over 30 books, edited many others, and translated works by Merleau-Ponty and Husserl. An archive of his papers is housed at the University of Freiburg. You can learn more about his work here and here. He joined the faculty at Ruhr University in Bochum in 1976, retiring in 1999. Prior to that, he taught at the University of Munich. He earned his PhD in Munich in 1959. Over the years, he held visiting appointments at several institutions. Professor Waldenfels died on January 23, 2026. (via Sebastian Luft) Obituaries elsewhere: Frankfurter Rundschau, Suhrkamp</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/01/28/bernhard-waldenfels-1934-2026/">Bernhard Waldenfels (1934-2026)</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>Though philosophers are often (if not quite accurately) thought to have been asking the same questions for thousands of years, philosophers throughout history have responded in their work to the circumstances of their day. We are living in strange, transformative, possibly calamitous times. There are a number of questions we could ask about how our work has been responsive to, or affected by, what has been happening in the world. For today, though, let&#8217;s focus on a question about teaching sent in by a assistant professor of philosophy. They write: How are current events being addressed in philosophy courses? I teach a contemporary moral problems course in which we cover topics like freedom of expression and immigration, but I do not quite know how (or whether) to introduce and manage discussion of the current and highly sensitive real-world events related to them. How much of today&#8217;s news should I be bringing into the classroom? What are other professors doing? Have they changed-up their readings to ones more relevant to the news? Have they altered their assignments? Or is it business as usual?  Also, I feel like generally I try to teach, at least lower-level courses, in such a way that my students are uncertain of my own views. I think this makes for more effective teaching. But that &#8220;neutrality&#8221; seems not only difficult but perhaps inappropriate for many of the current events I have in mind.  This professor says they&#8217;d be grateful for constructive advice on whether and how to discuss or address some of these highly charged current events. Readers?</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/01/27/are-current-events-making-their-way-into-your-classroom-how/">Are Current Events Making Their Way Into Your Classroom? How?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>

<p>The Journal of the History of Philosophy has announced that Julia Jorati, professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is the winner of its 2025 Book Prize. Professor Jorati was awarded the prize for her book, Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford University Press, 2024). Here&#8217;s the publisher&#8217;s description of the book: Philosophers from Europe and colonial America engaged in heated debates about the morality of slavery in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and these debates provide insights into the roots of modern racism. Julia Jorati explores the philosophical ideas, theories, and arguments that are central to early modern discussions of slavery. Some texts explicitly examine the morality of the transatlantic slave trade or of the enslavement of indigenous people in the Americas; others discuss slavery in predominantly theoretical ways. Based on these texts, Jorati shows that race and slavery came to be closely associated in this period. This association was often made through an endorsement of the theory of natural slavery: Black and indigenous people were commonly viewed as natural slaves, or naturally destined for slavery. The theory that some people are natural slaves also features prominently in theoretical discussions of slavery, and many philosophers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries embraced versions of it. Jorati surveys a wide range of historical material, from the views of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, to many less widely studied philosophers like Gabrielle Suchon, Morgan Godwyn, and Epifanio de Moirans. Jorati&#8217;s volume, along with its companion Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Eighteenth Century, illustrates the significance and philosophical sophistication of early modern debates about slavery, and serves as a valuable resource for scholars, instructors, and students who are curious about this widely neglected topic. There&#8217;s a review of the book at NDPR here. Honorable mention for the book prize was given to Raphaële Andrault (CNRS) for her book, Le Fer ou le Feu: Penser la doleur après Descartes [Iron or Fire: Thinking about Pain after Descartes] (Classiques Garnier, 2024). From the publisher: &#8220;Based on a vast collection of 17th-century texts, this work focuses on an important and little-known moment in the history of pain. It offers a fresh perspective on the analysis of..</p> <p>The post <a href="https://dailynous.com/2026/01/26/jorati-wins-jhp-book-prize/">Jorati Wins JHP Book Prize</a> first appeared on <a href="https://dailynous.com">Daily Nous</a>.</p>